A Trot Through Wales

London has been such a great city to be in. While I've only actually spent two full days in the city and the other two in Wales, I still love what I see around. The weekend was such a great experience here. Friday night we went to a youth/college age worship night put on by Hillsong Church at a theatre known as "The Forum" (the first of its kind to be done here in London). It was so powerful to see Jr High, High School and College-agers come together to worship as one body, jumping around, singing and just praising our God. The band was amazing and the worship and prayer time made such an impact. They had some students up on stage at the very end of the night to pray us out, and one of the students, who wasn't more than 12 or 13, hit me in the gut with his prayer. He talked about having a wall up between you and God, and to just let it down and let Him in between that wall... I can't put the words together as well as he did and he is so young, yet so rich in his place with God (or so it seemed). It was just an amazing night and some much needed time spent with God.

Saturday and Sunday we went on a tour to Wales. We boarded our bus Saturday morning after stopping at the nearby Starbucks and awing at all the Christmas decorations they have out. I think it's so early to have Christmas things out already, but I have to remind myself that they don't have a holiday like Thanksgiving here in between Halloween and Christmas. I still love the vibe that Christmas brings though!

We spent most of the day on and off the tour bus, making stops along the way to Brecon, Wales. Our tour brought us to the Chepstow Castle, Tintern Abbey and another small town, known for its second hand bookstores. The sights were amazing, especially the ruins of this old Abbey that stood during Henry the 8th time. The hostel accommodations were also great. I had expected a pretty run down place, but our hostel room was like a hotel room with four twin beds in it, that were soooo comfortable. Two of Samira's friends were also on the trip with us, Kristin and Stevie, who made me laugh so hard all weekend.

Sunday was spent in the Wales countryside on horseback. The horse I rode was named Nimbus, like the Nimbus 2000 broomstick Harry Potter had! He was quite the character and had a personality to him that was quite ornery, but warmed up to me after a little while. The hills were rolling green, with rich colors of golden yellow, burnt orange and reds all around, even the dirt (well mud here) was saturated in color. It rained a bit for the first two hours we were riding, but it wasn't unbearable until the last hour when sheets of rain came pouring down and the wind smacked it right into your face. We were sopping wet by the end of our tour and it was so cold, but we all still had a great time. The beauty of the countryside is unspeakable. It literally felt like I was looking at a picture someone took and then digitally enhanced its colors. Who knew that there were colors outside of the "California brown." It's just a bummer that I didn't get any pictures of it, because we weren't allowed to have our cameras while riding the horses, because they could spook easily. Needless to say, it was beautiful there.

We made a stop in Oxford on our way back into London as well, and visited the famous "Eagle and Child" pub, where JRR Tolkein and C.S. Lewis were some of the writers who used to meet to bounce ideas off eachother for their next great book. It had a cool atmosphere inside and delicious Treacle Tart.

Our weekend came to an end when our bus arrived back in London and we were back in Sam's room at the university of Westminster. We were happy to be 'home' and warmed up by the scolding hot showers we took, but sad that we were no longer in beautiful Wales.

My trip is coming to a sad ending in a few days when I must return home. I am happy to see everyone, but sad that traveling is coming to an end.

Foggy Londontown

No fog yet, but the air is crisp, cool, partly cloudy and a light drizzle here and there! I also experienced my first London tube ride on three separate rail lines to get back to Samira's dorm room. Another day of traveling to get here from Athens. It was hard saying goodbye to Lara and Erica as I got on the tram to ride to the airport. We had such a great time the last three weeks and I could not have asked for better travel buddies! Anyhow, I have decided that plane rides aren't so exciting and not so fun when you have a man sitting next to you with bad breath and leaning over armrest. Apparently his seat was not large enough (even though he was not a large man at all).

I had a bit of a scare at the airport coming through passport check/customs when I didn't know the address I was staying at and the man said "well how are you going to know where you're going?" I told him my friend was picking me up and he got her name and number as I handed him the piece of paper with Samira's name and number, hands trembling. He obviously woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. Lesson learned...always be nice to the customs check and just answer their questions.

Tomorrow we are going to see some sights and go to a worship night at Hillsong Church, London and a horseback riding tour through Wales this weekend! I'm definitely looking forward to my time here in Londontown. More from London soon and I will be back in the states one week from today...crazy!!!

Dirty Street Vendors

Athens, the land of Grecian architecture, delicious gyros and a huge flea market! We have been exploring the city again, much like we did in Rome. We walk everywhere, which I love that we are able to do. Mark, who we met at the last hostel has been traveling with us so it makes for a good dynamic with the four of us...he usually keeps us on track to where we are going most of the time!

Yesterday, we slept in til about noon because we hadn't gotten into our hostel til about 2:30 am from the airport after flying in from Corfu. We had heard there was a huge fresh produce type market on sundays near the flea market til about 2 so we went exploring, as we usually do. We found the flea market fairly easy since it is huge and probably about 6 or seven different streets. We asked a few people but couldn't find it so we just trekked around the flea market looking at all the cheap, knock-offs there are to buy, like the NEKE (instead of NIKE) sweatshirts and Calvin Klain (instead of Klein) underwear that we spotted and had a laugh about. We found delicious souvlaki for about 2 euros (which is like a shredded chicken pita) and great capuccino freddo (sweetened ice capuccino) at a cafe off one of the main streets. Probably one of the best cups of coffee I have ever had, and we all know how much coffee I drink! I got addicted to them when we were in Italy. I love the street vendors everywhere that we go where you can buy peanuts, roasted corn or chestnuts, sugar donuts, and gyros or souvlaki. We've had souvlaki now for all our main meals and we definitely stopped at McDonald's for 1 euro coffee this morning!

Today we visted the Acropolis and surrounding ruins that were the main part of the city in ancient times. The structures are amazing and Mark told us that one of the reasons why ancient structres are still so intact is because of the pure mixtures used for their "cement." Also another little fun fact is that the columns that occur in most of the structures were put together in pieces, rather than the one huge chuck of marble I always assumed the columns were carved out of. Like Rome, words cannot describe and pictures cannot depict how these structures look. We also went through the Agorra below the Acropolis and also a museum that had different pottery, jewelry and statues. While the statues are missing parts, they are still huge pieces of marble, but it would be amazing to see their actual size if they were whole again.

We did a little shopping as well, since I needed to buy a few warm and cheap things for my trip to London in a few days! We are now at a 24 hour internet cafe and going to have another cheap souvlaki from a "dirty street vendor" as Erica likes to refer to them as, but they are the best we've had!

A hop skip and jump...

We arrived in Corfu, Greece Wednesday morning after two train rides, an all night ferry and another two hour ferry to the island. The town is literally shut down since tourist season is over. Some of the local markets open up for an hour or two at random times during the day and there is one restaurant open as well, during random parts of the day.

It's beautiful here, however I have to say the Amalfi coast doesn't quite compare for me. We did a hike yesterday through up the mountain since they weren't renting kayaks out due to poor conditions. We hiked, well more like climbed to the top of this mountain, making our own path and me in flip flops of course! Since we made our own path through the brush and trees we all got some pretty narly scratches from these thorn bushes. The view was amazing at the top and worth the climb. Mark, a guy from Australia we met on the ferry, and Nells (from Maine), Jeremy and Kyle from California who are staying at our hostel and four stray dogs that decided to taga long with us were all on this little excursion. Mark and I didn't quite make it to the top but stayed back on a ledge because we decided it was too dangerous to continue. We had two of the four dogs sitting with us and one, that was a dalmation, decided that my lap was the best seat. It was a good few hours time to waste hiking through the Corfu terrain and kept us busy. We also swam in the Ionian Sea at the end of it all. It was quite cold, but refreshing and it is unbelievable how clear and blue the water is here. I love it! Only wish the waves were better and that I had my bodyboard to surf it a bit. Body surfing will have to do for now!

Halloween "party" tonight at the hostel (whatever that means) and off to Athens tomorrow sometime. And I have to say, hostel living has not been too shabby so far on our trip. We have definitely lucked out!

The 2000 step natural stair master

The title explains it all! We have been in the Amalfi coast for the past week, when we had only planned to be here two nights. It has been amazing though. It is so beautiful here and we have been able to see more places than we wouldn't have been able to if we had stuck to our original plan. The town is great and the locals are nice, they've even shown us around quite a bit. We have taken some 2000 stairs down to the actual town of Amalfi, and then back up again (not a very good idea by the way! haha), another 1700 steps down after a three hour hike to a town called Positano. Let's just say that my legs are feeling it after all those steps. Apparantly, we also have to take all the other stairs up that we see when we are exploring around.

It's been great though. The views here are amazing and the girls won't let me live down our dinner with some of the locals when we first arrived in town about eating. While we were at dinner everyone had eaten everything and I was still left with mounds of food on my plate. They were all making me laugh and our friends Antonio, Amelio, and (another) Antonio were all yelling EAT! EAT! at me in Italian and I could not stop laughing...to the point of tears. All this to say, Lara and Erica now say it to me every time we have a meal together.

I am also referred to as Britney Spears and/or Rhianna, and we are the "crazy american girls," because we walk everywhere (no matter if its 2000 stairs up and down, or a 7k walk to Positano). We are off to Greece tomorrow (I am pretty sure). It will take us about two days of travel by train and ferry. Our friend Tonja, who is staying in the hostel with us, just came from Greece and had a few suggestions for us. She is traveling on her own for 6 1/2 months! It's so crazy, but she had some great stories for us. I could never travel for that long on my own at all.

I am starting to miss home, friends, and familiarity, but this has definitely been the trip of a lifetime! I just realize I am such a home body and family and friends are so important to me! I can't wait to get home and show everyone some of the places we have been and share some more of the stories. Love from Italy!

Quick update from Agerola

Hello from Agerola, Italy! We have spent the last few days in this quaint little town near the Amalfi coast on the west side of Italy, also near the beautiful Island of Capri. We are having such a great time and there are so many stories to share but clearly not enough time to write them all and not enough words to describe some of the amazing places we've seen so far. When we first headed here from Naples, a nice woman named Carla gave us a ride to a town near Agerola called Pimonte. She hardly spoke any English. She took us to her house/hotel that her family runs to have her son take us the last few miles to where we would be staying. Their family was so nice and her son Antonio speaks very good English so he was able to better communicate with us.

We also got to tag along with a Dutch tour group to Capri which is an amazing island off the coast from Sorrento. We took a boat tour around the entire island and saw a place called the Blue Grotto. It's a small cave that you take a little boat into and the reflection from the sun outside on the water makes the water a beautiful blue color that illuminates the entire cave. It was amazing! Lara also got made fun of by the boat tour guide for taking so many pictures, but it was all in good fun.

I'll have to leave you with that for now... I do not have much time on the internet where we are staying so I will try to fill you all in more as soon as possible. The people here are so nice it is unbelievable. They love Americans (and other tourists in general) and have been showing us around the area, spots that we would not have known about on our own. I wish you all could be here to see it too.

Another (better) update coming soon! Stay tuned...

Four People in an Elevator Meant for Two

Here's a little story for you all:
Well after a two and a half train ride from Rome to Naples, two taxi drivers who probably ripped us off and some delicious pizza from the pizza capital of the world (Naples invented pizza) we were ready to settle into a hostel. The first hostel we went to had one bed left and the three of us would not fit. Luckily there was another hostel with open beds right across the street (the nice italian boy at the front desk called over for us to double check). We were also lucky because Naples is a very unsafe city to be walking around at night, let alone to mention carrying around large travel backpacks. At the first hostel we rode the elevator up to the 7th floor for 5 cents and barely fit. When we walked across to the second hostel we met an Italian guy from Pompei at the door and he ended up in the other elevator with us three girls and our backpacks. Antoher 5 cents and a minute later all four of us climbed out of an elevator probably no bigger than 2ft by 3ft or so. It gave us all a good laugh and this guy from Pompei had told us how he studied in New Castle\Manchester UK and did archaeology and used to give night tours for the actual ancient city of Pompei, which we visited today.

Pompei was a cool city. If you don't know the story I HIGHLY SUGGEST you get the quick recap on Wikipedia. It's a good one! :-) The very basic description is that Mt Vesuvius erupted very unexpectedly and quickly so the town was completely taken over and trashed from the eruption. Now it is a site you can go and see its ruins and the things that they have excavated. Going there I thought it would be a small town that was quick to walk through, but to my surprise it was a very large and thriving city at one time, which makes more sense now that I've seen it. It was so cool to think that people actually lived there and what made it even more real was seeing a cast they did of how they found some of the preserved bodies and animals while excavating many years later. We got some cool pics of the ruins as well as some funny ones with us girls being silly. We also got some whistles and kissing noises by the locals selling things outside the Pompei ruins in the "new" city. It was uncomfortable but it's a lot better when you don't acknowledge it! We just kept walking and figuring out how to get back to Naples.

Tomorrow we are off to the Amalfi coast of Italy and then we are figuring out how to get to Greece from there. I have experienced more public transportation in the few days of being Italy than I have in my whole life, now I highly support public transportation and wish that California had a better system. It's cheap and gets you to where you need to be! We should be in Greece by middle of next week, which is where we will spending most of our time. I cannot believe I have only been here 4 full days and that I will be spending almost two weeks in Greece!

I am still trying to find a good way to upload some pictures. I really wish everyone could see what we have been doing. Better yet, if everyone was here to see the things we have been doing, because words and pictures do not capture the essence of many of these places... and the stories are a lot funnier in person I'm sure! ;-)

As a side note... my first hostel experience has not been so bad. However it is one of the nicer ones and you can't beat free internet access and delicious continental breakfast of coffee (have to have the coffee...itàs great here and doesn't leave the weird coffee taste in your mouth all day), cereal, croissant, and juice! However, I may have broken my straightening iron by using it in the outlet even with a converter. I am hoping this is not so, but again this is just a side note! Ciao!